DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
Status of Claims
This Office Action is in response to the application filed 25 May 2023. Claims 1-20 are presently pending and are presented for examination.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 15 January 2026 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97, 1.98. Accordingly, the IDS was considered.
Drawings
The drawings are objected to because the axis numerals and labels, legend text and/or captions in Figs. 6-9 are insufficiently dark and/or blurred, impairing legibility and adequate reproduction. Corrected drawing sheets in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(d) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. Any amended replacement drawing sheet should include all of the figures appearing on the immediate prior version of the sheet, even if only one figure is being amended. The figure or figure number of an amended drawing should not be labeled as “amended.” If a drawing figure is to be canceled, the appropriate figure must be removed from the replacement sheet, and where necessary, the remaining figures must be renumbered and appropriate changes made to the brief description of the several views of the drawings for consistency. Additional replacement sheets may be necessary to show the renumbering of the remaining figures. Each drawing sheet submitted after the filing date of an application must be labeled in the top margin as either “Replacement Sheet” or “New Sheet” pursuant to 37 CFR 1.121(d). If the changes are not accepted by the examiner, the applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
Specification
Applicant is reminded of the proper language and format for an abstract of the disclosure.
The abstract should be in narrative form and generally limited to a single paragraph on a separate sheet within the range of 50 to 150 words in length. The abstract should describe the disclosure sufficiently to assist readers in deciding whether there is a need for consulting the full patent text for details.
The language should be clear and concise and should not repeat information given in the title. It should avoid using phrases which can be implied, such as, “The disclosure concerns,” “The disclosure defined by this invention,” “The disclosure describes,” etc. In addition, the form and legal phraseology often used in patent claims, such as “means” and “said,” should be avoided.
Claim Objections
Claims 2-10 and 16 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claims 2-10 and 16, “The/the platform” should read --The/the robotics platform--;
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Claim 1 recites “the set of processors” in line 6. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claims.
Claim 1 recites “the received commands” in lines 9-10 and “the commands” in line 12. It is not clear if “the received commands” and “the commands” are the same commands or are different commands. Therefore, the claim is indefinite and rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b). The examiner interpreted both “the received commands” and “the commands” as “the received user commands” for the purpose of examination.
Claim 1 recites “the received commands” in lines 9-10 and line 23. It is unclear whether they are the same “commands” since “receiving… commands” are recited in both line 8 and 18. It is especially unclear whether the “received commands” of line 23 is the commands “received” in line 8 or line 18. Therefore, the claim is indefinite and rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b). The claim has been interpreted as best understood by the examiner.
Claims 5, 6, 9 and 10 recite “the received commands”, while it is unclear whether the commands are “received” in line 8 or line 18 of claim 1. Therefore, the claims are rejected for similar reasons above.
Claims 1 and 11 recites “the motors”. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claims.
Claim 1 recites “a boundary of the invariant safe set” in lines 20-21 and further recites “a boundary of the invariant safe set” in lines 22-23. It is not clear if “a boundary of the invariant safe set” of lines 22-23 is the same boundary as “a boundary of the invariant safe set” of lines 20-21 or is a different boundary. Therefore, the claim is indefinite and rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b). The claim has been interpreted as best understood by the examiner.
Claim 11 recites similar language as claim 1 and is rejected for similar reasons above.
Claims 5 and 15 recite “switching control from the received commands to the combination of received commands and backup controls as the robotics platform moves closer to boundaries of the invariant safe set” which is ambiguous. It is unclear what reference is used to determine the platform moves “closer” to the boundaries. Therefore, the claim is indefinite and rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b). The claim has been interpreted as best understood by the examiner.
Claims 8 and 18 recites “wherein the regulation function is scaled by the inverse of the robotics platform's velocity towards the boundaries at high-speed” which is ambiguous. It is unclear how “high-speed” is determined, i.e., at what level the speed is considered as “high-speed”. Therefore, the claim is indefinite and rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b). The claim has been interpreted as best understood by the examiner.
Claims 10 and 20 recite “the invariant set”. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claims.
Claims 2-10 and 12-20 are rejected by virtue of the dependency on previously rejected claims.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1-6, 8-16 and 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gurriet (“A Scalable Safety Critical Control Framework for Nonlinear Systems”) in view of Bobier-Tiu (US20200216085).
As to claims 1 and 11, Gurriet teaches a robotics platform and a method for high-speed geofencing, comprising:
a set of one or more motors (Gurriet page Fig. 11 and related text);
at least one sensor (Gurriet page 187260, right column para 1, onboard sensing…; page 187265 2nd paragraph: force sensors…actuators and sensors…; page 187272, right column, para 1, …camera; Fig. 11 and related text); and
a controller comprising a set of one or more processors and a memory containing a controller application and a backup controller application, wherein the controller application configures the set of processors to control the robotics platform by performing the steps of (Gurriet page 187260, left column, para 1: main onboard computer…computes the control action that is sent to the motor controllers…TX2 runs standard Linux and the ERIKA3…two operating systems are able to share information through a shared memory interface…; also see section V-VI for backup controller):
defining a safe set identifying positions where the robotics platform is safe (Gurriet page 187269: define the safety set as an envelope around the UAV…safety set will hence be described as in (4) with…, Eq (65)…; page 187263, 2): …safety set is then simply the union of the backup set…; also see page 187250, last paragraph: …denote the chosen safety set by…; Fig. 2);
defining an invariant safe set based upon a backup set, where the invariant safe set is a subset of the safe set, and the backup set is a subset of both the invariant safe set and the safe set (Gurriet page 187252, III. A: …a way to define a control invariant subset…to start with a “seed of safety”: the backup set…, also see Definition 3, equations 4, 12-13, Proposition 3, Proposition 6 and Fig. 2, Fig. 3);
receiving commands controlling the set of one or more motors to track to a desired velocity (Gurriet page 187270, left column, last paragraph: velocity controller closes the loop around desired velocities in the world frame; also see Fig. 27);
determining if the robotic platform is approaching a boundary of the invariant safe set (Gurriet page 187269, section 1) Collision Avoidance Framework: … define the safety set as an envelope around the UAV in which we know there is no obstacles…The safety set will hence be described as in (4)…; page 187270, Eq (67); page 187271, section 2): for each update whether or not the system would end up inside of STub…with this new safety set. If it does, then the update can be carried out…; Fig. 28); and
upon a determination that the robotics platform is approaching a boundary of the invariant safe set, switching control of the motors from the received commands to a combination of the received commands and backup controls generated by the backup controller application (Gurriet page 187270: Eq (66), Fig. 27-30).
Gurriet does not explicitly teach receiving user commands; and generating commands controlling the set of one or more motors based on the received commands; and wherein the backup controller application configures the set of processors to monitor the controller and intervene as the commands received by the controller direct the robotics platform towards a boundary.
Bobier-Tiu is directed to methods for controlling a vehicle based on vehicle states and constraints. Bobier-Tiu teaches Driver inputs such as driver commands for operating a vehicle are provided to the controller…Controller determines a desired command based on the driver command…the controller may adjust multiple commands to optimize operation of the vehicle …The assessor circuit can determine metrics used to determine whether driver commands are used, optimized commands are used, or a combination thereof are used based on the threat level. Accordingly, the assessor circuit actuates the blender switcher to provide an actuator command to the vehicle that may encompass a range of blending of controller commands and driver commands based on the threat level (Bobier-Tiu para 0147-0148, also see para 0048).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gurriet so as to include the above limitations in view of Bobier-Tiu et al. with a reasonable expectation of success. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to combine Gurriet and Bobier-Tiu because this would have achieved the desirable result of providing a method to control the vehicle such that a driver's operational input is corrected to avoid vehicle catastrophes (Bobier-Tiu para 0004).
As to claims 2 and 12, Gurriet in view of Bobier-Tiu teaches the platform of claim 1 and the method of claim 11, wherein defining the invariant safe set comprises generating the invariant safe set based on an implicit control barrier function (Gurriet page187253, III, A. para 1, and III, B.1), Eqs (17)-(18)).
As to claims 3 and 13, Gurriet in view of Bobier-Tiu teaches the platform of claim 2 and the method of claim 12, wherein the implicit control barrier function is based upon a flow of the robotics platform within the safe set (Gurriet pages 187252-187253, Eqs (12)-(13), Eq (18); Fig. 2).
As to claims 4 and 14, Gurriet in view of Bobier-Tiu teaches the platform of claim 1 and the method of claim 11.
Gurriet further teaches the main onboard computer is a Jetson TX2, which computes the control action that is sent to the motor controllers (Gurriet page 187260, right column, para 1).
Bobier-Tiu further teaches wherein switching control of the motors is regulated by a regulation function (Bobier-Tiu para 0147-0148:…providing a solution to blend driver input with automated control to generate blended commands…the assessor circuit actuates the blender switcher to provide an actuator command to the vehicle that may encompass a range of blending of controller commands and driver commands based on the threat level).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gurriet so as to include the above limitations in view of Sugiura et al. with a reasonable expectation of success. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to combine Gurriet and Sugiura because this would have achieved the desirable result of providing a method to control the vehicle such that a driver's operational input is corrected to avoid vehicle catastrophes (Bobier-Tiu para 0004).
As to claims 5 and 15, Gurriet in view of Bobier-Tiu teaches the platform of claim 4 and the method of claim 14.
Gurriet further teaches the invariant safe set (Gurriet page 187250, para 1).
Bobier-Tiu further teaches wherein the regulation function generates a safety filter capable of smoothly switching control from the received commands to the combination of received commands and backup controls as the robotics platform moves closer to boundaries of the invariant safe set (Bobier-Tiu para 0147-0148:…the assessor circuit actuates the blender switcher to provide an actuator command to the vehicle that may encompass a range of blending of controller commands and driver commands based on the threat level).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gurriet so as to include the above limitations in view of Sugiura et al. with a reasonable expectation of success. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to combine Gurriet and Sugiura because this would have achieved the desirable result of providing a method to control the vehicle such that a driver's operational input is corrected to avoid vehicle catastrophes (Bobier-Tiu para 0004).
As to claims 6 and 16, Gurriet in view of Bobier-Tiu teaches the platform of claim 5 and the method of claim 15.
Bobier-Tiu further teaches wherein switching control of motors further comprises switching control of the motors to the combination of received commands and backup controls in response to a determination by the safety filter that the robotics platform will not move into the safe set based on a flow of the platform (Bobier-Tiu para 0147-0148:…the assessor circuit actuates the blender switcher to provide an actuator command to the vehicle that may encompass a range of blending of controller commands and driver commands based on the threat level).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gurriet so as to include the above limitations in view of Sugiura et al. with a reasonable expectation of success. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to combine Gurriet and Sugiura because this would have achieved the desirable result of providing a method to control the vehicle such that a driver's operational input is corrected to avoid vehicle catastrophes (Bobier-Tiu para 0004).
As to claims 8 and 18, Gurriet in view of Bobier-Tiu teaches the platform of claim 4 and the method of claim 14.
Bobier-Tiu further teaches wherein the regulation function is scaled by the inverse of the robotics platform's velocity towards the boundaries at high-speed (Bobier-Tiu para 0152-0153: …take this environmental and contextual information into account…determine the outer limits of the safety envelope and apply optimal controls in view of the foregoing… various implementations can blend of both human control and processor control to achieve optimal performance… the commands can be adjusted so as not to exceed the performance envelope of the vehicle…the controller may determine how much speed the vehicle can carry into the corner without exceeding the vehicle envelope…the controller may take action to provide optimal commands to the vehicle such as reducing throttle input…).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gurriet so as to include the above limitations in view of Sugiura et al. with a reasonable expectation of success. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to combine Gurriet and Sugiura because this would have achieved the desirable result of providing a method to control the vehicle such that a driver's operational input is corrected to avoid vehicle catastrophes (Bobier-Tiu para 0004).
As to claims 9 and 19, Gurriet in view of Bobier-Tiu teaches the platform of claim 4 and the method of claim 14.
Bobier-Tiu further teaches wherein switching control of motors further comprises switching control of the motors to the received commands as the robotics platform moves away from boundaries of the invariant safe set (Bobier-Tiu para 0146-0149: A signal from risk assessment module 574 can be used to trigger controller 586 to take over partial or full control of the vehicle...The desired command may be the same command made by the driver, or it may be a command that is adjusted…based on the sensed …contextual information of the vehicle… the controller may adjust multiple commands to optimize operation of the vehicle…The assessor circuit 624 can determine metrics used to determine whether driver commands are used, optimized commands are used, or a combination thereof are used based on the threat level…; also see para 0104-0105, para 0013).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gurriet so as to include the above limitations in view of Sugiura et al. with a reasonable expectation of success. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to combine Gurriet and Sugiura because this would have achieved the desirable result of providing a method to control the vehicle such that a driver's operational input is corrected to avoid vehicle catastrophes (Bobier-Tiu para 0004).
As to claims 10 and 20, Gurriet in view of Bobier-Tiu teaches the platform of claim 1 a and the method of claim 11.
Bobier-Tiu further teaches wherein the backup controls have increasingly more control of the motors over the received commands as the robotics platform moves closer to a boundary of the invariant set (Bobier-Tiu para 0048: …evaluates performance envelopes and as a driver approaches any envelope limitation in N-Dimensional space, the blending with system generated vehicle commands will increase, until at the envelope limits, the system has taken over full or majority control).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gurriet so as to include the above limitations in view of Sugiura et al. with a reasonable expectation of success. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to combine Gurriet and Sugiura because this would have achieved the desirable result of providing a method to control the vehicle such that a driver's operational input is corrected to avoid vehicle catastrophes (Bobier-Tiu para 0004).
Claims 7 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gurriet in view of Bobier-Tiu as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Sugiura (US20080234864).
As to claims 7 and 17, Gurriet in view of Bobier-Tiu teaches the platform of claim 4 and the method of claim 14.
Gurriet modified by Bobier-Tiu does not teach wherein the regulation function is Lipschitz continuous in its arguments.
Sugiura is directed to robots with collision avoidance functionality. Sugiura teaches … The output of the whole body motion control and the output of the collision avoidance motion control are blended into joint velocities according to the closest distance. The final joint velocity vector q is shown in Eq 14, where qcontrol is the joint velocity vector computed by a robot controller such as whole body motion control, qca is the joint velocity vector computed by the collision avoidance controller, and f(d) is again factor which can assume values between 0 and 1 to represent the magnitude of danger of collisions…(Sugiura para 0065, Eq. 14).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gurriet so as to include the above limitations in view of Sugiura et al. with a reasonable expectation of success. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to combine Gurriet and Sugiura because this is merely combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results (KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 82 USPQ2d 1385 (2007)).
Examiner’s Notes
Examiner has cited particular columns/paragraph and line numbers in the references applied to the claims above for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings of the art and are applied to specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested from the applicant in preparing responses, to fully consider the references in entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the examiner.
In the case of amending the claimed invention, Applicant is respectfully requested to indicate the portion(s) of the specification which dictate(s) the structure relied on for proper interpretation and also to verify and ascertain the metes and bounds of the claimed invention. This will assist in expediting compact prosecution. MPEP 714.02 recites: “Applicant should also specifically point out the support for any amendments made to the disclosure. See MPEP §2163.06. An amendment which does not comply with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.121(b), (c), (d), and (h) may be held not fully responsive. See MPEP § 714.” Amendments not pointing to specific support in the disclosure may be deemed as not complying with provisions of 37 C.F.R. 1.131(b), (c), (d), and (h) and therefore held not fully responsive. Generic statements such as "Applicants believe no new matter has been introduced" may be deemed insufficient.
Inquiry
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to HONGYE LIANG whose telephone number is (571)272-5410. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Friday 9:00am-5:00pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Rachid Bendidi can be reached on (571) 272-4896. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/HONGYE LIANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3664
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